| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: sort of crucible from which great talents are to emerge as pure
and incorruptible as diamonds, which may be subjected to any
shock without being crushed. In the fierce fire of their
unbridled passions they acquire the most impeccable honesty, and
get into the habit of fighting the battles which await genius
with the constant work by which they coerce their cheated
appetites.
Horace was an upright young fellow, incapable of tergiversation
on a matter of honor, going to the point without waste of words,
and as ready to pledge his cloak for a friend as to give him his
time and his night hours. Horace, in short, was one of those
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: north as we have followed for the past three days?"
The recollection of the horrid days that had just passed
was the thing that finally decided the Manyuema, and so,
after a short conference, they took up their burdens and set
off to retrace their steps toward the village of the Waziri.
At the end of the third day they marched into the village gate,
and were greeted by the survivors of the recent massacre,
to whom Tarzan had sent a messenger in their temporary camp
to the south on the day that the raiders had quitted the
village, telling them that they might return in safety.
It took all the mastery and persuasion that Tarzan possessed
The Return of Tarzan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: my particular friend Dr Heath; but yet I must acknowledge I made use
of little or nothing - except, as I have observed, to keep a preparation
of strong scent to have ready, in case I met with anything of offensive
smells or went too near any burying-place or dead body.
Neither did I do what I know some did: keep the spirits always high
and hot with cordials and wine and such things; and which, as I
observed, one learned physician used himself so much to as that he
could not leave them off when the infection was quite gone, and so
became a sot for all his life after.
I remember my friend the doctor used to say that there was a certain
set of drugs and preparations which were all certainly good and useful
A Journal of the Plague Year |
